How Many License Suspensions Is Too Many?

I'm still trying to grasp how a guy with 10 license suspensions on his record could legally get behind the wheel.

Sure, we can all feel better that Michael Pajak is behind bars on first-degree and second-degree manslaughter charges. He will be arraigned today at Superior Court in Enfield.

We must confront how Pajak could legally have been driving his red pickup on Sept. 2 — when he had 10 suspensions on his record and he allegedly plowed into Trooper Kenneth Hall's parked police cruiser on the shoulder of I-91, killing the veteran officer.

Some might view Pajak's record of violations — these include speeding, driving while intoxicated and illegally passing a school bus — as not worthy of losing your license for good. Six of Pajak's 10 temporary suspensions were related to his failure to show up in court, not reckless driving.

But this isn't some noble First Amendment case of free speech. It's about a record of more than a decade of not following the rules and ignoring the consequences.

We sanctimoniously tell our teenagers that driving is a privilege, not a right. Yet that rule didn't seem to apply here.

Pajak flaunted the privilege to drive by ignoring his growing list of driving violations and the laws that apply to the rest of us. This is a guy who decided to give up some of his rights by choosing to ignore our judicial system.

The folks at the Department of Motor Vehicles say they "understand the frustration" of people such as me who wonder how someone keeps driving with 10 license suspensions.

But the lawyers say there must be a clear legal basis for suspending a driver's license. Pajak had his right to due process through a public hearing — until his arrest in Vermont on Friday on manslaughter charges. At that point, DMV Commissioner Robert Ward again suspended Pajak's license.

Robert J. Devlin, chief administrative judge for criminal matters, told my colleague Christine Dempsey that it's rare for a judge to permanently revoke a license. The only automatic and permanent revocation is if a driver gets nabbed a third time for drunken driving.

"An immediate suspension would bypass a person's state and federal rights to a legal hearing prior to the suspension,'' the DMV told me in a statement released by Ward's office.

There are critics who say that the DMV has the power, under a special statute, to yank a license without a hearing. The DMV responds that it needs a law similar to the statute that mandates revoking a license for drunken driving.

"The DMV's lack of enforcement of existing laws is appalling. How many chances does someone get to hinder the public safety?'' said Nancy Ricci, a former chairwoman of Remove Intoxicated Drivers. "We have to put the brakes on their excuses."

DMV spokesman William Seymour says there has to be an imminent threat to public safety for the commissioner to take the rare step of revoking a license without a hearing.

A state law would define just how many license suspensions qualify as an imminent threat.

Ten license suspensions sounds like an imminent threat to me, but I asked state Rep. Antonio Guerrera, co-chairman of the General Assembly's transportation committee, what the magic number for revoking a license might be.

"We are going to start having a conversation whether we should be looking at the number of suspensions and basically taking away their license for a few years,'' Guerrera said, promising a hearing during the next session.

"The only thing we can do now is change the law. It's difficult to try and legislate responsibility,'' Guerrera said. "If people just don't care, there's not much we can do about it."

That's true, but we can make a pretty loud statement that we won't accept drivers who think the rules don't apply to them.

"We don't have to give you a license,'' Guerrera told me. "This is a privilege."